Thankful Thursday - Look what I found!! New places to look for records

I don't think we understand how thankful we should be for being able to do genealogical research in such a great time as today! Just when you think you can’t find anything new in research, a new website comes out or you find a new search engine that searches just genealogy sites. 

Allow me to back up a little….You might have read in a previous post about how I recently found enough documentation to allow me to make a solid connection to a Banta family through my paternal grandmother’s line. If not go ahead and read it now.....it's ok, I'll wait..............oh you're back great....

There is an 1893 published genealogy on the Banta family a lot of researchers use. Now, I have been researching long enough to know you don’t take ANY printed (or now online) genealogy as gospel. However, I also know an older genealogy CAN be used as a research guide to help you know where to look for sources, thus furthering your research and validating the older published work.

OK with THAT being said, this older genealogy has my Henry Banta (page 165) as being married to Charity Banta (a cousin of his) having 4 children (I'll have to do a different post about this inaccuracy) and then....

"He removed from Mercer County, Kentucky to Hart County thence to Green County in the same state, and afterwards to Illinois, where he died in 1843."1

Well that's helpful…..I think….I mean he narrows it down to Illinois in 1843, but come on Illinois is a BIG state even in the early days. I would love to know who T.M. Banta spoke with when putting his book together that knew this information.

Oh yeah and beside the size of the state, the number of records and tax lists for that year is pretty slim…..But anyway I still kept looking for Ole Henry…..Oh yeah also did Charity (the wife) die in Kentucky before the move? If so, in which of the counties that he migrated through? or did she make it to yettobedeterminedplace in Illinois? All good questions.

So I was using a wonderful new genealogy search engine called Genealogy Gophers where you can search through 80,000 digital genealogy books.....Wow! 80 thousand and not one Facebook find on a recent person when you are looking for a person from the 1840's.....but I digress.

I thought I would test out the new site by entering this long shot on Henry Banta and Illinois. When I do the search with his name and that location, it comes back with the same books that I have found before - none of which help with narrowing down where Henry went in Illinois.

So then I start putting in his children's names with Illinois as a place (you know using the FAN club method)
Albert - nothing helpful, 
        Lambert - nothing helpful, 
               Abraham - nothing help......wait a minute what is this?

As you can see the fourth one down is titled "Nauvoo Journal" well that one caught my eye because of the names in the clipping. My Henry's wife - Charity; daughter - Charity; son - Abraham. It was definitely worth clicking on to check out.....I mean after all I am on page 11 in the search results.

I find out that the Nauvoo Journal Vol 1 from 1989 has published an Nov 28, 1843 petition to the United State Congress from the Mormon residents of Hancock County, Illinois. This petition is officially titled, "Memorial of inhabitants of Nauvoo in Illinois, praying redress for injuries to their persons and properties by lawless proceedings of citizens of Missouri."

Wait What! Nauvoo Illinois......but they were just in Hart County Kentucky tax records the year before....what a minute let me look how far away that is maybe it's not that far.....HOLY COW....according to Google maps it is 444 miles (or 145 hours of walking) from Hart County to Nauvoo...

WOW that's a lot of walking!

From this little break through I was able to find a couple more little tidbits that I didn't have before. But all of that is food for another posting.

But to bring this posting full circle....the reason I am writing this is to show even after 122 years (2015-1893) modern technology has allowed us to know where in Illinois Henry and Charity Banta ended up.

But as always it only opens up more questions. Why did they go there? Did they stay there? Did they become Mormons?

Hope you enjoyed, glad you stopped by and please come back again ;)


Sources:
1. "A Frisian Family, the Banta Genealogy : descendants of Epke Jacobse, who came from Friesland, Netherlands, to New Amsterdam, February, 1659" by Banta, Theodore Melvin,